The phenomenon of chimera states in the systems of coupled, identical oscillators has attracted a great deal of recent theoretical and experimental interest. In such a state, different groups of oscillators can exhibit coexisting synchronous and incoherent behaviors despite homogeneous coupling. Here, considering the coupled pendula, we find another pattern, the so-called imperfect chimera state, which is characterized by a certain number of oscillators which escape from the synchronized chimera's cluster or behave differently than most of uncorrelated pendula. The escaped elements oscillate with different average frequencies (Poincare rotation number). We show that imperfect chimera can be realized in simple experiments with mechanical oscillators, namely Huygens clock. The mathematical model of our experiment shows that the observed chimera states are controlled by elementary dynamical equations derived from Newton's laws that are ubiquitous in many physical and engineering systems.

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We consider the system of externally excited identical van der Pol-Duffing oscillators unidirectionally coupled in a ring. When the coupling is introduced, each of the oscillator’s trajectories is on different attractor. We study the changes in the dynamics due to the increase in the coupling coefficient. Studying the phase of the oscillators, we calculate the parameter value for which we obtain the antiphase lag synchronization of the system and also the bifurcation values for which we observe qualitative changes in the dynamics of already synchronized system. We give evidence that lag synchronization is typical for coupled multistable systems.